Page 17 of The Maverick

“He’s been watching you,” Hawke said. “Not just your books. You. He knows you’re the voice behind her. He’s personalizing it.”

She didn’t argue. Didn’t cross her arms or throw out another sarcastic quip. That scared him more than the message.

He moved to the side table, grabbed his phone, and started snapping shots of the screen for backup reference before pulling the thread onto a flash drive.

“I’ll get this to Gavin. Reed can run it deeper, scrape the hidden metadata. See if we can trace anything.”

She moved closer, her presence like a hum under his skin.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “That I should’ve taken this more seriously. That I should’ve told someone.”

“No.” He looked at her. “I’m thinking I should’ve been here months ago.”

Her gaze faltered.

“I saw the signs,” he went on. “I knew you’d pulled back. I knew your posts had dropped off, your book was late. I watched you disappear in pieces and didn’t say a damn word because I told myself you wanted distance.”

“I did,” she said. “We both did.”

“That was two years ago. It was a lie then, and it’s a lie now.”

Vanessa blinked.

“You left because you thought I couldn’t choose you over the job,” he said in a voice devoid of emotion. “I didn’t fight for you because I didn’t know how. But none of that means I ever stopped watching.”

Her lips parted like she wanted to argue, but the words didn’t come.

He turned the laptop back toward her. “There’s a second message from the same account, three days before the letter showed up.”

He opened it. This one was shorter.

“You keep writing her like she belongs to someone else. But you know the truth. She was always mine. Stop rewriting what we both know happened.”

Vanessa stiffened. “That sounds like he’s referencing something specific.”

“He’s responding like you’ve betrayed a shared history.”

Her voice dropped. “Like he thinks we had something.”

“Or like he thinks he did something, and you ‘rewrote’ it.”

Hawke’s gut clenched.

He sat down at the desk, brought up her calendar on his backup drive. “You said you didn’t recognize the man in thesigning photos. But if he’s been watching, he could’ve been at other appearances.”

She stepped behind him, arms brushing his shoulders as she leaned in to look.

“Wait,” she said, tapping the screen. “That charity panel in Houston. The moderator had to cancel last minute, and the replacement was—what was his name? Shit. It’s on the program in my bag.”

“I’ll get it.” Hawke was already moving.

Downstairs, he grabbed her leather tote from beside the couch and rifled through until he found the event program. He scanned the list and found the name: Miles Brenner.

The panel moderator. Not a fan. Not a ticket-holder. But someone with direct access to Vanessa. Someone who’d sat beside her on stage for forty-five minutes and led a discussion about power dynamics in fiction.

When he came back up, Vanessa was pacing.

“Brenner,” he said, handing her the paper.

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